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European markets are lower today with shares in London off the most. The FTSE 100 is down 0.44% while France's CAC 40 is off 0.29% and Germany's DAX is lower by 0.04%.

Looking at the last three columns (below), the first one (Actual), is what was reported this morning. The second column (Forecast) is what analysts had forecast and the third column is the previous report. Full calendar HERE.

WASHINGTON7 (Reuters) - New orders for key U.S.-made capital goods rose less than expected in March, but a second straight monthly increase in shipments suggested business investment accelerated in the first quarter amid a recovering energy sector.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump told the leaders of Canada and Mexico on Wednesday that he will not terminate the NAFTA treaty at this stage, but will move quickly to begin renegotiating it with them, a White House statement said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - United Airlines said on Thursday it would offer passengers who volunteer to forfeit their seats on overbooked flights up to $10,000 as part of the carrier's efforts to repair the damage from the rough removal of a passenger.

(Reuters) - Dow Chemical Co , which is merging with DuPont , reported a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit as the seeds and chemical maker benefited from its transformation into a consumer markets focused company.

LONDON (Reuters) - Italian toll-road operator Atlantia has tapped a consortium of banks to finance an upcoming cash-and-share bid for Spanish rival Abertis , sources close to the matter told Reuters, as it seeks to create an industry giant with a market value of more than 35 billion euros ($38.17 billion).

A Russian reconnaissance warship has sunk after colliding with a freighter north of Istanbul on the Black Sea on April 27 although all crew members were reported to have been rescued, Dogan News Agency has reported. A number of tugboats and rescue boats were dispatched to the area by the Coast Guard following the collision between the Russian vessel and the Togo-flagged ship, which was carrying livestock.

The Liman

According to the Defense Ministry, 'the Liman' collided with another ship, 'Ashot-7,' about 40km southwest from the Bosporus Strait. The hull of 'the Liman,' a 1,560-ton reconnaissance ship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, was breached below the waterline, the Russian ministry said in a statement. According to authorities, it has since sunk.

Turkish Coast Guard officials stated that all 78 soldiers on the ship were rescued after the collision.

The collision, which occurred 18 nautical miles away (29 kilometers) from the coast of Kilyos, might have been caused by fog, according to officials.

'The Liman' was built during Soviet times in Poland and commissioned in 1970. It is mostly unarmed, but carries a radar station, a hydroacoustic detector and other reconnaissance equipment needed to track surface ships and submarines.

It's listed as requiring a crew of 85, although it was not immediately clear how many people were on board at the time of the incident.

Just as we warned yesterday following the EIA inventory and production data release, the exuberance over the crude draw was misplaced (due to the surge in product builds and almost unprecedented refining activity along with continued resurgent oil production). Saudi imports continue to show no sign of the OPEC cuts and asone anylst noted "the market looks like it wants to turn lower, maybe it has run out patience waiting for OPEC"

As a reminder, U.S. crude inventories declined 3.6m bbl in EIA data Wednesday, but gasoline, distillate stockpiles grew by a combined 6m bbl, and U.S. production also grew for 10th week.

As Bloomberg reports, WTI, Brent deepen declines and erase Wednesday's post-EIA rally as market's focus switches to big builds in gasoline and distillate inventories, rather than the crude draw.

"The gasoline numbers took the edge off the headline," in EIA data Wednesday, says Jasper Lawler, senior market analyst at London Capital Group. "In the last couple of days we've had two afternoon attempts to reverse the downtrend and both have heavily been sold into."

"The market looks like it wants to turn lower, maybe it has run out patience waiting for OPEC"

Have you ever wondered how tech companies that have been losing hundreds of millions of dollars year after year can somehow be worth billions of dollars according to the stock market? Because I run a website called "The Economic Collapse", there are naysayers out there that take glee in mocking me by pointing out how well the stock market has been doing. This week, the Dow is flirting with 21,000 and the Nasdaq crossed the 6,000 threshold for the first time ever. But a lot of the "soaring stocks" that have been fueling this rally have been losing giant mountains of money every single year, and just like the first tech bubble this madness will eventually come to an end in a spectacular fiery crash in which investors will lose trillions of dollars.

Anyone that cannot see that we are in the midst of an absolutely insane stock market bubble simply does not understand economics. Every valuation indicator that you can possibly point to says that we are in a bubble of epic proportions, and history teaches us that all bubbles inevitably come to an end at some point.

Earlier today, I came across an article by Graham Summers in which he persuasively argued that the price to sales ratio indicates that stock prices are far more inflated than they were just prior to the great stock market crash of 2008...

Sales cannot be gimmicked. Either money comes in the door, or it d ...

The market expectations for weekly initial unemployment claims (from Bloomberg / Econoday) were 240 K to 245 K (consensus 243,000), and the Department of Labor reported 257,000 new claims. The more important (because of the volatility in the weekly reported claims and seasonality errors in adjusting the data) 4 week moving average moved from 242,750 (reported last week as 243,000) to 242,250. The rolling averages generally have been equal to or under 300,000 since August 2014.

The number Americans who recently lost their jobs and sought unemployment benefits rose last week to a one-month high, though the increase appeared largely concentrated in New York state. Layoffs nationwide are still extremely low.

News that Academy Award-winning director Jonathan Demme had died at 73 from complications of esophageal cancer was greeted Wednesday by social-media and other public tributes from such A-listers and luminaries as Ron Howard, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Spike Lee, Bruce Springsteen and David Byrne, as well as Stephen King, Rosie O'Donnell, Anne Hathaway, Ira Glass and others.

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